I spy with my little octopussy eye

EVERY octopus has a favourite eye. Such behavioural asymmetry, or "handedness", has never before been seen in invertebrates.

Ruth Byrne and her team from the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research near Vienna waved a plastic crab in front of eight captive octopuses (Octopus vulgaris). They found that five animals consistently followed the action with their left eye, while the others preferred to use their right (Animal Behaviour, vol 64, p 461).

"Octopuses often rest in small cavities from where they can only use one eye at a time to look out," says Byrne. She suggests that the part of the brain that normally handles information from the less favoured eye gets reassigned for other important tasks, such as memorising landmarks.

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